Supreme Court upholds ruling that ended Texas affirmative action

WASHINGTON {AP} The Supreme Court let stand Monday a ruling that led Texas to end affirmative action at its public colleges and universities.

The case involved a successful challenge to a University of Texas law school policy that gave special consideration to black and Mexican-American student applicants.

This may not be the last word on affirmative action in higher education. A ruling that struck down the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy is before an appellate court and appears to be working its way to the Supreme Court.

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The court's order nonetheless dashed hopes that the justices were ready to resolve conflicts among appellate courts over affirmative action. Those differences have surfaced since the court's 1978 fractured Bakke decision, when the majority said universities may take race into account in admissions.

The state challenged a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that found the former law school policy discriminated against whites.

The Supreme Court was asked to consider the case in 1996, but refused that year. Since then, the case returned to the lower courts and has worked its way back.

Texas education officials have said the ruling left the state at a competitive disadvantage with other public universities in recruiting students.

The Texas attorney general's office, in a brief in favor of the affirmative action policy, said the court should decide whether the Bakke decision remains the law of the land.

"The court's long silence on consideration of race in higher education has left conflict and confusion in the lower courts," the state argued.

The state said that even though Texas had long ago eliminated legal segregation in higher education, the admissions policy was critical to bring diversity to the state system.

A high court decision is crucial in 16 states that are operating under judicial orders and negotiated desegregation plans designed to eliminate discrimination in higher education.

In the Texas law school class of 500 that entered last fall, there were 18 blacks and 34 Mexican-Americans in a state where more than 40 percent of the population comes from those groups.

Texas has substituted a program that guarantees admission to any public university in the state to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

This program "has the effect of lowering undergraduate admission standards," the state argued.

Lawyers for two nonminority applicants who were denied admission argued the appeals court decided the case correctly and did not contradict the Bakke decision allowing affirmative action.

"The court of appeals has not held that race could never be considered in admissions," the applicants' lawyers said.

"Instead ... the court considered the ... justifications that the law school proffered for its use of racial classifications ... and concluded that none of them was constitutionally adequate ... ."

The applicants also argued that the state failed to identify any law school admissions practice that is traceable to the era of legal segregation in Texas education.

Since the state began granting preferences to minorities in the 1960s, there was a "clean break with the ... practices of the 1940s," the lawyers said.